To ensure optimal treatment for your asthma, you must communicate openly with your doctor about your symptoms and how you feel. Watch family medicine physician Jennifer Caudle, DO, explain what to share with your doctor to best control symptoms.
One of the first things you can do is to really make sure that you're having an open and honest conversation with your physician. Honestly, this is so important as a family doctor I see it all the time. One of the ways that I'm going to know if your symptoms are well controlled, and if you are doing well on your medications is by how often and how severe your symptoms are.
So if you don't tell me exactly how often you are getting your symptoms or the fact that they might wake you up out of sleep or the fact that you're not able to exercise because you wheeze or get short of breath, I may not be able to help you in that way. So think about it this way when you see your doctor you're talking about your asthma symptoms, really tell them, tell them not only how often you're needing to use your rescue inhaler, but how severe your symptoms are getting when you get the symptoms, and what the symptoms are keeping you from being able to do.
This will better help you, and your doctor, figure out a great plan that's really going to work for you in treating your asthma.
Jennifer Caudle, DO, is a board-certified family medicine physician and graduate of Princeton University. She is currently an assistant professor in the department of Family Medicine at Rowan University-School of Osteopathic Medicine.
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